


stanford(?) pines

by Anonymous



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Alternate Universe, Episode: s02e20 Weirdmageddon 3: Take Back the Falls, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Journal 3 spoilers, Reverse Portal AU, warning for panic attacks flashbacks and mentions of torture-
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-22
Updated: 2016-09-22
Packaged: 2018-08-16 06:52:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,074
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8091889
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: It's a little terrifying waking up in the middle of a field not knowing who you are or how you got there. Lucky for him, Stanford Pines has a loving family that'll try their best to recover all his memories. Right?





	

**Author's Note:**

> rev portal au belongs to busket on tumblr
> 
> done as a warmup of some sorts

The first thing he registers is a soft, grassy field. Or at least, he thinks its a field. It's hard to tell when you're lying face flat on the ground. The pain suggested that maybe he'd collapsed there. He wouldn't know. There wasn't time to figure out how he'd fallen when pain flared up in his wrists and neck, hot and searing, like he'd been bound and gagged. He winced and turned over to the side.

If the forest surrounding him wasn't so calming, he thinks he might've panicked then and there. If he wasn't currently in a dilemma, he thought, it seemed like a nice enough place to explore. He wished he knew  _why_ he was there, though. His thoughts raced as he tried to trace his steps to remember what he was last doing.

A surge of panic ran through him when he realized he couldn't remember. He couldn't remember  _anything._

 _I'm going to die out here,_ he thought. He couldn't remember who he was supposed to be or why he was hurt so bad,  _why does everything hurt so bad,_ he couldn't bring himself to get up and could barely move.

After what felt like forever but could've only been a minute, he heard footsteps from somewhere behind him, getting alarmingly closer by the second. The man braced himself for whatever potential threat could hurt him in such a vunerable state. 

He gasped when in a second he was enveloped by impossibly tiny arms- were these  _children?-_ holding him upright in a tight embrace. Despite the pain shooting up his spine, he didn't protest. A part of him thought it felt familiar, felt wonderful. The children were talking too fast for him to process, so he rest his head on theirs and tried to enjoy the moment. 

Then an older, gruff looking man approaches them, and he freezes up. Part of him feels like  _now_ he might face a threat, but all doubts fade away when the man kneels in front of him and starts sobbing. 

One of the kids, a small girl in an oversized sweater, walks up to the old man and asks what was wrong. The other kid stays silent and lowers his head to the ground. 

"Ford- Ford erased h-his memory to defeat Bill. It's all gone."

The girl's face falls as she turns back to- his name was Ford?- in disbelief. She cups Ford's face in her hands and shakes her head.

"Thats not true! You remember me, Grunkle Ford, right? Right?" she asks.

"I..." Ford starts, but the words die on his tongue. The small group in front of him looks absolutely  _broken_ as they wrap him in a tight hug that knocks the wind from his lungs. Ford thinks he should feel guilty but doesn't know what to say.

He catches the old man say something like "If I knew that this is what bringing me back would do, God, I..." but he doesn't finish. He says something about being sorry for being mad and Ford just says "It's okay, don't worry about it," because he just couldn't bear to see these people break down even more.

They called him a hero and he thought maybe he should feel good about that, but at the moment all he wanted was to know what was going on and how he could stop their tears from falling.

The small group walks him back to some kind of house- if you could call it that considering how it was all in shambles- and he starts picking up small details while they talked. The girl was called Mabel, the boy Dipper, and the one-armed man half-supporting-half-carrying Ford was Stan. A man that vaguely resembled a gopher in a lab coat also joins the group on the way, looking as broken as the rest when they explain the news. 

Then Mabel pulls out a scrapbook and  _insists_ that they try to bring Ford's memories back and despite the strong urge to fall asleep on the couch they'd settled on, he figures  _Why the hell not?_ If anything could stop them from looking so depressed he was willing to try.

* * *

 

A week's gone by since losing his memories, and Ford thinks things are going a bit smoothly. Dipper says something about how it should've been impossible, but Stan waves it off with the older Pines just being too stubborn for their own good. 

The memories come in little bits and pieces, but Ford's pieced together enough of his life to at least get the gist of it. Stan was his twin, they grew up together in Glass Shard Beach before Ford left for college and started researching on the Weirdness of Gravity Falls. A little while later he quit his research and took a small time job as an inventor/repairman, no Weirdness involved, for the next 40 years, until the younger twins stayed with him this summer and brought all their shenanigans with them.

(He also remembered how Stan got kicked out when they were teens, and Ford couldn't stop apologizing despite Stan telling him it was "No biggie".)

Strangely enough, the family always dodged questions when it came to why Ford stopped his research, or where Stan was in those 40 years and why his whole right arm was gone. They never brought up the events leading to Ford's memory loss at all. Every time he'd try to dig deeper into it, they'd shut him out or change the subject. It frustrated him to no end.

He brought it up with Soos one slow afternoon while they tried to reconstruct Ford's old inventions to jog his memory.

"I dunno, Dr. Pines," Soos said. "Some things you're just better off not knowing."

"It's  _my life,_ Soos!" Ford snapped. "How on earth am I better off not knowing about  _myself?_ "

"I know you're the kind of guy who always wants answers, dude, but trust me when I say they're just trying to keep you safe."

Ford pouted. Maybe he'd made a lot of dumb mistakes in his life, but not remembering only left a hole in his chest that couldn't seem to be filled. Part of him wanted to be happy with what he had now, a loving family and all, but all the unanswered questions were driving him crazy.

Dipper peeked into their lab and called Soos over to help with some "fanfiction", and Ford was left alone with all his frustrations.

He snuck upstairs to the kids' room to see if Mabel was willing to do something,  _anything_ to keep his mind off things, but it seemed that she was out again with her friends. He kicked Dippers bed frame in anger, then jumped back when his pillow moved aside to reveal the corner of some kind of book. He pushed the pillows and blankets off the bed to see Dipper was hiding three journals— journals with  _Ford's hand_ printed on the cover.

He opened the first one and found "Property of Stanford Pines" scrawled over on the first page in his distinct cursive. Ford beamed. If these books were his, maybe he could read more about his life and uncover the secrets his family was insistent on hiding. He scooped them up and brought them down to his room to read.

The first two books flew by quickly. Ford frowned as he found nothing more than his research of oddities. Maybe another day he could come back to them, relearn all the knowledge he'd once possessed, but right now he was determined to uncover more about himself.

He beamed when he found that the third journal contained more personal entries. The part about the muse seemed interesting enough, but he figured it could've just been another daydream in his younger years. He flipped past several pages of observations to see if anything else would catch his eye and landed on a rather peculiar page. 

The entries were all scrawled over with black ink that covered the entire page. It was covered in- was that  _blood?-_ and scribbled over with cryptic text and codes. Several eyes were doodled all over the pages in red ink. Ford felt his stomach lurch, and he had to hold the edge of the desk for support. The words on the page were burned into his mind.

**MY MU SE WAS A M O NS T E R**

**I W AS A P U P P E T**

He grabbed at his shirt as a heavy pang went through his chest. Flashbacks were normal whenever he'd recover a strong memory, but none of them were ever so painful. His head spun as dozens of yellow eyes filled his vision, all staring into his soul. Ford pulled at his hair, sinking to his knees screaming "GET OUT OF MY HEAD, CIPHER!"

Images of a floating yellow triangle flashed through his mind. Journeys through the mindscape, burning fields and vicious monsters and  _those eyes, those piercing yellow eyes-_

And suddenly Ford's holding Fiddlefold tight after he falls from the portal in complete shock-

And he has completely no control of his body as Bill possesses him and he laughs, he has that horrible laugh coming out from his own throat-

And a rift cracks through the sky and Bill sends the town into total chaos-

And he's in Bill's fortress, he's shackled in the air and he can feel the manacles digging into his skin and it's burning, then everything's burning as electricity runs through his body and he's  _screaming-_

And Stan runs into the room after hearing Ford's shouting, pushing the Journals off the desk and rushing over to Ford, curled up on the ground with his head in his hands yelling until his throat went raw. Stan picks him up and runs a hand through his hair, whispering calming words into his ears, but Ford can barely hear him. Stan's holding him tight, raising his voice a bit and rocking him slightly until Ford was drawn out of the rushing flood of memories, just a little bit. Just enough to look up at Stan's face and reel as another memory settled in. 

Ford yelped a bit as blinding blue light flooded his vision, his hands shaking and eyes shot wide open.

"Stanley! STANLEY!"

"I'm here, Sixer, I'm right here."

"St-Stan! I c-can't... Y-You could  _die_ out there and I-I can't... B-Bill-"

"I'm  _alive,_ Ford, you came back for me and Bill's gone."

"Stan... S-Stan I can't-" he sobbed. The memory faded and he was left shaking like a leaf in Stan's arms.

"Shh, Ford, it's over now."

"I'm sorry, Stan, I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm...."

"No, Ford,  _I'm_ sorry," Stan said. "We- I shouldn't've kept this all from ya. I was just... Scared of how you'd react." He pinched the bridge of his nose. "I just wish you didn't have to find out like this."

Ford sniffed and buried his face in Stan's shoulder. 

"It's just... Seein' how you were actin' before facing Bill... I thought you deserved more than that, y'know, after everything that happened. A happier life an' all, cause back then it was like you'd never forgive yourself."

Ford thought back to how he summoned Bill and caused so much distress to everyone. They stayed in silence for a moment, Ford reeling from the sudden flood of bad memories as Stan continued to run a hand through his hair.

"Do..." Ford whispered. "Do  _you_ forgive me?"

Stan pulled back so he could look his brother in the eye. "Of  _course_ I do, nerd!" He grinned. "Couldn't ask for a better brother."

Ford gave a small laugh as he felt the tension fizzle out. "Then I  _am_ happy, Stan. And... Me neither. Thank you for... _trying_  to protect me."

"Hey, what're brothers for, right?" Stan ruffled Ford's hair. "But I think we shouldn't be keepin' secrets like that anymore. Eugh, why'd I ever think that'd work out?" He stood up, offering his hand to Ford. "Nah, no more secrets. I'll answer anything you want now, I promise."

Ford shakily took his hand and pulled himself up, leaning on Stan for support. "Th-Thank you, Stanley, but..." He looked over at the discarded Journals lying on the floor. "M-Maybe we should just. Take a br-breather first."

"No problem! Wanna go, I dunno, watch TV in the living room?"

"Mmm. Cheesy S-Soap Operas?"

Stan snorted and wrapped an around his shoulder. "Thanks for remembering."

 


End file.
